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Hello SMB Deal Hunters!

I’m excited to share 5 new off-market businesses for sale sourced directly by our team in today's Off The Grid issue.

🔎 Looking for deals in your area? We can source them for you.

This issue is proudly sponsored by SMB Deal Exchange, our new platform for connecting buyers and sellers of off-market businesses.

COMMUNITY WINS

Here’s what one SMB Deal Hunter Pro member shared this past week:

👀 Heads up: September isn’t even over yet, and 8 Pro members have already closed deals this month, with another 18 under LOI.

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NEW OFF-MARKET DEALS

These deals span the country. For custom-sourced deals in your area, click here.

1/ Automotive Dealership, Repair and Inspection Business

📍 Location: New York
💼 EBITDA: $375,000
📊 Revenue: $1,000,000
📅 Established: 2005

💭 My 2 Cents: New York caps what a shop may charge for a state inspection, and outside the New York City area that is $10 for the safety check and $11 for emissions. What the $21 actually buys the shop is a car on the lift and its owner in the waiting room, once a year, by law. It has run since 2005 and does three things on one lot: sells used cars, repairs them, and holds a state inspection license. A general manager already runs the lot, the bays, and the lane. That said, I'd want revenue split across sales, repairs, and inspections over three years, since the bays repeat on their own while every car sold has to be replaced with another one the business buys up front. Then I'd ask how many of those inspections turn into repair work here, since shop labor in New York runs about $125 an hour and that is where the money in this lane actually is. And I'd want the inventory list with what each car cost and how long it has sat, because a car that has not sold is money already spent, and the price has to come down the longer it waits. Worth noting: the seller told us he is willing to finance 50% of the deal, so most of what he gets paid arrives only if the business continues to perform after he leaves.

2/ Multi-Location Preschool and Private School Education Provider

📍 Location: Florida
💼 EBITDA: $2,000,000
📊 Revenue: $11,000,000
📅 Established: 2015

💭 My 2 Cents: Since 2023 a Florida family can send a child to private school with about $8,200 of state money attached, whatever the family earns, and four-year-olds already came with a free state prekindergarten year before that. This group was already running when the K-12 money arrived, so it did not have to build anything to benefit: families already enrolled got a check, and families priced out before became reachable. It has operated since 2015, now runs 10 preschools and 5 private schools, and a Vice President of Operations and two Regional Directors already run the whole thing. The first number I'd want is enrollment against licensed capacity at each of the 15 campuses, since the state fixes how many adults a room needs and the next child in an open classroom costs almost nothing. Tuition against what the scholarship actually covers comes next, because it separates a school that is close to state-funded from one still collecting most of its money from families. And I'd read the leases, since a campus that has to move needs the new building inspected and licensed before a student can walk in, which takes time and isn't easy. The 10 preschools are also where the 5 private schools find their students, so what a buyer is acquiring is not 15 separate schools but one path a family can walk from preschool to graduation.

3/ Storm Shelter and Septic System Manufacturing Company

📍 Location: Oklahoma
💼 EBITDA: $600,000
📊 Revenue: $3,000,000
📅 Established: 2014

💭 My 2 Cents: This is a precast concrete plant: septic tanks and storm shelters, poured from the same molds and trucked out to be set in the ground. The tank half does not ride on homebuilding: close to half of the country's 21 million septic systems are failing, so most tanks replace one rather than serve a new house. Storm shelters arrive in bursts after a bad spring, at several times the ticket of a tank, so the plant gets a steady floor and a weather upside out of one set of fixed costs. It has run since 2014 with 16 people. An operations manager of 12 years runs the day to day, while the owner, at 80, brings in the sales. Government agencies buy here too, under contracts in place. I'd want the revenue split between tanks and shelters year by year, since that says how much of the earnings ride on the weather and how much on replacement. Then the customer list, split between contractors who buy tanks all year and homeowners who buy one shelter once, since only one repeats. Then the government agreements: what those agencies buy, whether jobs are bid or under term contracts, and when they renew. What defends a plant like this is weight. A 1,500-gallon tank runs 8 to 12 tons empty, and most precasters serve 100 to 200 miles before freight eats the job, so the competition is whoever owns a yard within a couple hours.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Mary Katherine, who goes by MK, has 20 years in marketing and still works full time at a big food company.

She and her husband, Matt, both come from families who own small businesses, and they always wanted a business of their own.

So instead of starting from scratch or buying a franchise, they decided to buy something already running.

They had no idea how to go about it, so they joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro, our business buying accelerator.

They landed a Denver roofing, windows and siding company doing around $2.5M a year.

The owner built it on referrals alone, for over 10 years, with no marketing.

We helped them close it for just over $3M, about a year after they joined us.

Today, her husband runs it full time, MK puts in 10 to 20 hours a week, and it cashflows about $1M/yr.

It's been hard, but she'd still take it over working for someone else. Her words: "it hits different when it's your own."

4/ Ethnic Grocery Store

📍 Location: California
💼 EBITDA: $400,000
📊 Revenue: $16,000,000
📅 Established: 1986

💭 My 2 Cents: Grocery margins are thin, which is true and only half the story. The same shelf gets sold and refilled around 17 times a year, so a thin margin gets collected over and over on the same square foot. An international grocery adds one more thing: it stocks what the chain down the road never has, so most of these shelves hold items with no chain price to be checked against. This store has been open since 1986, the father and the son both still work in it, 50 people move the volume, and the marketing budget is about $1,000 a month, mostly a weekly ad in a local paper. I'd start with the department numbers, meaning what produce, meat and prepared foods each contribute and how fast each turns. I'd also want the share of sales running through SNAP and WIC, since enrollment rises when unemployment does, so the bigger that share, the less a downturn shows up at this register. And I'd ask who does the buying and where the product comes from, since the assortment is why anybody drives past a chain to get here. Buying is also where shrink comes from, meaning what spoils, breaks or walks out the door. Shrink runs a point or two of sales in most groceries, and here a single point is $160,000, so the fastest way to add earnings is throwing away less rather than selling more.

5/ Power Washing Company

📍 Location: Texas
💼 EBITDA: $220,000
📊 Revenue: $480,000
📅 Established: 1995

💭 My 2 Cents: A parking lot washed today is dirty again in a month. That is the whole reason pressure washing can be a repeat business rather than a run of one-off jobs: for a commercial property the cleaning is part of looking open, so it goes on a schedule and the same truck comes back to the same address all year. This company has been at it since 1995 with six employees. The owner is still in all of it: repairs, scheduling, the field and the door knocking. The good news for anyone willing to take that on is that a lot of the customers are already on a weekly or biweekly schedule. The first thing to check is the customer list, with how long each account has been on the schedule and what it bills a year, since how long they have stayed says whether that revenue is secure. The second is the equipment by age, since the hot water units and trailers are the expensive part and replacing them lands on the next owner. The third is what a recurring account pays per visit and how long the crew is on site, since that tells a buyer whether the next dollar comes from a new account or raising price on an old one. A business like this grows on density. The closer the accounts sit, the more stops one crew gets through in a day, on the same truck and the same payroll.

COMMUNITY PERKS

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RECENT PODCAST EPISODE

Derrick built a career in finance, then got laid off from his tech job and decided he was done building someone else's company.

So instead of chasing another day-trading run or side hustle, he went looking for a business that was already making money.

He found a Seattle landscaping company its owner had quietly run for about 30 years, with clients who had stayed 15 and 20 years.

With our help, he beat out another buyer to win it, then closed it in a way that broke almost every rule he had been taught.

Today, 15 months in, the business throws off around $430K a year in profit, and for the first time he is actually enjoying it.

And for our audio-only listeners, jump in and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

THAT’S A WRAP

See you tomorrow!

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Disclaimer

This publication is a newsletter only and the information provided herein is the opinion of our editors and writers only. Any transaction or opportunity of any kind is provided for information only; SMB Deal Hunter does not verify nor confirm information. SMB Deal Hunter is not making any offer to readers to participate in any transaction or opportunity described herein.